on identity

“If you wake up at a different time, in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?”

— Chuck Palahniuk

A few things recently have been causing me to consider the somewhat nebulous concept of “identity”.

I’m not going to ruminate over our “Ikea lives” (I’ll leave that to the much better qualified author of Fight Club), but a subject rather closer to home - our business.

Who (or rather what) is Code to Customer?

Last night I had to deliver a speech for the Summer of Code. The brief was to “tell us a little about your business”. Well, there’s the obvious - we’re a two-person Ruby on Rails shop who kick ass and chew bubblegum. We write beautiful Rails code - that’s what we do and what we love to do.

I feel like there’s more though. So I present to you, loyal reader and patient digester of my ramblings, Who We Are (unabridged).

• We have Customers. Not Clients. There are two types of people who have Clients. The first being Lawyers. I’ll let you guess at the second.
• We help our Customers kick ass. It’s no fun being a silent partner - if there’s something we think you could do better, we’ll let you know. We’re also prepared to put in the hard yards when necessary. Case in point - I’ve been up all hours of the night for the past week helping the awesome guys at Wildfire get their app ready for a big launch.
• It’s as important to be honest as it is to be nice. Sadly, they are occasionally mutually exclusive
• We’re a business, not a “start-up”. And we make no apologies for that. We think it’s just as important to have businesses in this world which are in the black every single month as it is to have the start-ups who are taking the all or nothing “i’ve-maxed-out-my-credit-cards-what’s-next” leap. And we have no time for people who tell us that means we’re taking the “easy way out”.
• There’s more to us than just code. Sure, Oliver and I live, eat, sleep and breathe Ruby when necessary. But we make sure there is balance - time out from behind a display. Ollie does kickboxing (see illustrative photo above), and I rock out with my band every so often.
• If you’re going to spend your time on something, you better be doing it right. And you better be having fun at the same time.
• Money’s not the game, but it is a pretty good way to keep score.

Another catalyst for this introspection was my serious business card drought. How the heck am I meant to feel like a legitimate businessman without my little identity cards?

So we’ve charged the epically talented and always awesome James Nisbet with coming up with a new logo for us. He’s doing awesomely, especially since our typical feedback runs along the lines of “Umm, well, I kinda like that but, uhh… maybe…. more blue?”.

Here’s what we’ve got so far:

What do you guys think? Maybe someone can give James some coherent feedback. I sure can’t.